What must have gone thru their minds as they entered that room? Did they feel trapped? Did they suspect? Did they question why take a photo at night?

I remember in N&A the look of confusion on Alexandra's face.

In Rasputin they were all standing around like they didn't know to do.

The door being opened and that wallpaper and door in front of them.

Someone tell me was the writing that was put there by one of the guards already there or was it after, if before did they see it?

At the exhibit in Delaware that is the item that haunted me most at the end. The bayonet was staged for theatrical purposes. But that wallpaper had brown stains on which could have very well been blood.

I guess no one can really what would be on one's mind when a handful of guards with guns come in the room and declare they are going to shoot you

I would imagine from what I have read , when Nicholas says "WHAT?!WHAT?!" that he couldn't really believe what was happing at least to this family. Maybe he knew it would happen to him but not his wife and children.

Alexandra must have known and felt they would all die together as her response was to make the sign the cross.

I think maybe N & A believed they may pay for thier errors but I don't know if they believe their children would also pay.

But then again if they knew something may happen to them and knew they were hated, at some level they could have also have known thier children were not safe.

I just know I'm glad I was not in that room that night. The murder of the Imperial Family is one of the most horrible crimes in the 20th century

The murder of the Imperial Family is one of the most horrible crimes in the 20th century

i'm sorry but the murder of the IF was not one of the "most horrible crimes of the 20th century."

it was a SERIOUSLY[/i] evil/troubled century.

this is the century of:

the Armenian genocideWWIthe russian civil warstalin's wars against his people (the kulaks/ the ukranaina famines/ the purges/ the sentencing of returning all soviet POWs to siberia)WWII (assorted atrocities on all sides)the holocaustthe congo warsthe biafran genocidethe bangaldeshi faminesthe ethiopian faminesbosnia

and i'm sure i've missed many other examples of truly evil and criminal behavior. the killing of one small family does not compare and does not warrant such a superlative.

the Armenian genocideWWIthe russian civil warstalin's wars against his people (the kulaks/ the ukranaina famines/ the purges/ the sentencing of returning all soviet POWs to siberia)WWII (assorted atrocities on all sides)the holocaustthe congo warsthe biafran genocidethe bangaldeshi faminesthe ethiopian faminesbosnia

It seems that a few of them were awared about the coming events as Olga, Alexei, Doctor Botkine and AF.. Alexandra called in her diary of "the angel" (the death angel in fact) .. she writted "the angel is coming up"..

Nicholas and his other daughters seems to have been more optimistics..

Nevertheless, they might have been all amazed when they realized that they would be shot. Nothing was prepared and they were said to go down in the cellar for security reasons. I think the first behaviours in such cases are fear, trembles, a great shock.. When you are in front of a danger, you think about anything unless your fear, only your fear... I have also heard people who escaped a big danger saying that they saw their entire life passing through their heads... maybe it was the case for the last imperial family of Russia. It will be a mistery to all eternity. :-/

All that you write is true, but in fairness, you are not comparing like with like. Atrocities are being perpetrated all over the world every hour of every day of every week. .. It is ghastly and indefensible, but sadly such is man's inhumanity to man - and we never seen to learn. However, this Forum is devoted to Imperial Russia, and, in particular, to the last Imperial Family, their relatives, friends, associates and etc.

During the making of Gleb Panfilov's film - 'The Romanovs - the last days', I interviewed the British actress, Lynda Bellingham, who portrayed Alexandra Feodorovna in that film. They were in Pushkin shooting some of the exterior scenes. Most of the interiors were shot on 'stages' in Prague. As you know, films are not, in general, shot sequentially. In the case of 'Last Days', the death scene was filmed first.

Lynda Bellingham told me how, on the Sunday evening she took the girls who were playing the grand duchesses out for a meal. They were all young, happy, aspiring actresses and this older actress was determined they should have a memorable evening. Towards the end of the meal she said to them - 'We are going to do something really horrible tomorrow. Something none of us will ever forget'.

The following day, the scene was set and the cast took up their positions. Lynda Bellingham told me that even although she knew it 'was only a film', and they had rehearsed and 'walked through the scene', nothing could have prepared her for that door bursting open and the barrage of armed 'guards' rushing in to confront them, when they were actually expressing it as reality. Retelling this weeks later, she could still feel the chill.

I think only those involved in this re-enactment can have some idea of the family's absolute terror. They, of course, did not have the - possibly numbing - effects of surprise/shock.

Terror. Disbelief. What any human being would feel when faced with a gang of murderous thugs aiming guns at them. What would you expect?

The murder of one is as evil as the murder of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions. I don't think you can say these murders were less important or less horrific than the thousands of other crimes in a very evil century. They all originate from the same basic evil and human failings. These creatures shot a helpless hemophiliac child at point blank range and then kicked him as he lay wounded. That is evil, plain and simple. No one can say otherwise.

rskkiya

I don't think anyone who has remarked on the unimagineable final moments of the Imperial Family has, for a second, thought anything other than the perpetrators of their murder were evil.

tsaria

Hello Well--- is a doctor EVIL when she administers the lethal injection to a criminal sentences to death? Admittedly many people here would support the Romanovs, but the soldiers involved in the execution most likely saw this as their revolutionary duty... Was the execution Evil? Not to everyone...Was the Tzarist state Evil? Not to everyone....

Terror. Disbelief. What any human being would feel when faced with a gang of murderous thugs aiming guns at them. What would you expect?

The murder of one is as evil as the murder of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions. I don't think you can say these murders were less important or less horrific than the thousands of other crimes in a very evil century. They all originate from the same basic evil and human failings. These creatures shot a helpless hemophiliac child at point blank range and then kicked him as he lay wounded. That is evil, plain and simple. No one can say otherwise.

I think it's always wrong to take another life, except maybe in a case of self-defence. Personally I'm against the death penalty, and though I wouldn't say the doctors in that case do an evil deed, I certainly don't think one can call it a very good deed either. Too many people on death row are innocent, minors or mentally disabled. People make mistakes, police investigations sometimes fail to uncover enough evidence, juries consist of people with prejudices and issues of their own ... IMHO, the final judgment and punishment should not be in man's hands.There have been cases in the US where people's innocence was proven after they had been put to death. I wonder how the doctors who gave them their injection feel?The whole 'just doing my duty, just following orders' is just an attempt to escape responsability for your own actions, IMO. I don't think that that argument can excuse the executionaries of the Romanovs. And then they didn't stop at a 'clean execution' now did they? Kicking a boy who is bleeding to death? How 'dutiful' is that? Hope I haven't stepped on any toes, this is just how I see it.

The execution squad, as has been pointed out in FOTR, came from various situations and viewpoints. The guards, from whom the squad was culled, were generally young men who needed employment. To be a part of the execution squad was, for a few, their "jihad," for others simply part of their job. So many people can equivocate when it comes to a job and a paycheck; think of those who were recruited to run the concentration camps.

With regards to the infamous acts that have been perpetrated against families throughout history and continue to be committed, even as we read these words: If those of us who have come to know and perhaps appreciate the IF can bear in mind that extremists can take control when living conditions for the masses become untenable, then our time here will not be wasted.

In order to make wise, humanitarian-based decisions, we need to understand what has gone on before us so that the same grievous errors are not repeated. From the example of Nicholas and his family, it should become self-evident that our existence does not end within our own "palace" walls. All of us are are linked to the rest of the world, even more so than was the case 100 years ago for the Romanovs. If we do not understand this and consider other people's issues as well as our own, then we—like the Romanovs—are doomed to suffer accelerated terrorist assaults until even our most innocent are destroyed.